Morning all. I woke up about ten minutes before my alarm today and it is throwing me off just a little bit. I don’t know why that is but just ten minutes and somehow I am off kilter the entire day. But I did sleep well, which is a rarity for me so I will take the slightly off kilter feel. For now we have a writing prompt waiting and ready. So timers set for fifteen minutes and off we go…
I like Dana. I only started to glimpse her story towards the end, but as a character I think she is someone I can work with.
Tuesday, March 24th: The sheets smelled clean and fresh.
The sheets smelled clean and fresh. She inhaled deeply. There was something enjoyable about stripping down a bed, washing the sheets, and hanging the blankets out on the line to air out that she enjoyed. Dana found that odd as in general, she didn’t care for doing laundry. It was a chore and she did it on her set rotation, but there was something different about the bedding.
There was something satisfying about completing the process.
‘Which I haven’t done,’ she reminded herself. She gathered the sheets and pillowcases from the dryer and closed the dryer door. She then walked the bundle back to the bedroom still contemplating the mysteries of laundry.
‘Maybe it is the mass of it,’ she thought. With her personal laundry she did a load of it once a week. She hauled the basket down to the laundry room and then inevitably, she would realize she needed to wash the towels, wash cloths and reusable makeup remover cloths and cotton rounds she switched to using in place of disposable items. She didn’t know why she never remembered to get them and add them to the basket when she gathered the clothes. She never did though and had to go back upstairs. In the bathroom she kept a small cloth basket.
At the start of her week she had a small pile of folded wash cloths, makeup removal clothes and a small basket corralling the reusable cotton rounds. By the end of the week all those items had been used and piled in the small cloth basket under the sink. There was a net bag where she put the cotton rounds. All she had to do was zip the bag shut and add it to the laundry. She then took the small cloth basket downstairs and added it to the general laundry. Once there she recalled the towels and went back for them.
In the laundry room, she sorted as she went.
The darker clothing went in first, along with the towels and all bathroom items being washed. Everything else was placed in the plastic laundry basket that lived in the laundry room. When the dark colors were moved to the dryer she would sort again, pulling the delicates from the basket and giving them their own load. Since the whites sometimes required bleach, she left them until last so the rest of her clothing could be cleared out before the beach came out. It was a color safe bleach, but still, she remembered too many dark clothes spotted with bleach stains in her youth to risk clothes now.
By contrast the bed was simple. She stripped it down, bundled the sheets in one big mass and took it directly to the washer. Once the machine was chugging way she took the blankets out to the yard and hung them up to air out. They too would have the occasional wash, but they didn’t fit in her machine and would need to be taken to the laundromat.
Once dry the sheets were returned to the bed.
As she made the bed, she thought about getting a second set of sheets but knew she wouldn’t, not until these wore out. She once had several sets and what happened was always the same. She would strip the bed and then remake it with the fresh sheets. With the new sheets on the bed the impetus to wash the sheets was through and they would linger in the laundry.
Then she would have to wash two sets of sheets. In addition, with her method she never had to fold a fitted sheet. It went from bed to wash and then back to bed. No folding required. As the sheets were placed on the bed she tried not to dwell on the contract. On how it would be accepted.
‘I won’t know until Monday,’ she reminded herself. On the weekends, she tried to push work away and focus on the household chores she left for her days off.
Ten til Midnight 